Simarjit Shergill

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Month: October 2017 (Page 3 of 3)

Light From Many Lamps

October 5, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Light from many lamps , W. Beran Wolfe

        From my readings of the anthology Light from Many Lamps so far,  I have learnt many valuable life lessons which I will bear in mind during my pursuit of education in leadership.  I , as a student of leadership, don’t know yet what my final style of leadership is going to be ; maybe it will be a mix of different models that I hope to develop and evolve along the way , or maybe it will be variable depending on situations  .  What I do know is that I will always be someone who will seek to work for a bigger good.

To this end I found W. Beran Wolfe’s story very inspiring. First of all , I found it very easy to identify with him in his role as healer, and leader. I fully agree with Dr Wolfe when he states that ‘ no one can be happy in work which is centered entirely about his own person, and deals exclusively with the satisfaction of his own immediate needs’ , and ‘ to find happiness we must seek for it in a focus outside ourselves’. This goes very well along with the model of servant leadership as I understand it in my readings so far . As per Greenleaf ( 1977)  “ a servant leader is someone who ”entrusts his/her authority to staff and helps them achieve a shared vision by developing their full potential “ . I believe for a leader to be successful in leading and influencing, they need to be committed to not just their own work and development , but also to the growth of the organization and the people they work with . Quoting Dr Wolfe again “ for those who seek the larger happiness and the greater effectiveness open to human beings there can be but one philosophy of life, the philosophy of constructive altruism “ .

Since starting my study of leadership , I have learnt and reflected on some very exciting ideas about leadership. I have started extrapolating them to myself and other leaders and followers I come across in my work and personal life. What I do know so far is that altruism is and will be a very important part of my repertoire as a human being , leader and follower. I already practice it at a small scale in my daily work as a physician ; there have been many a times where I have foregone lunch because a patient was late ,  gone back to see a patient at the nursing home at the end of my work day, or called family members in the evening during my off duty hours.  I hope to carry on this spirit in any future roles I take up, and to be able to  inspire my team members to do the same . I hereby close with another quote from Dr Wolfe , “we must seek happiness not as if it were a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow , but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life” .

 

References

Greenleaf ,R. ( 1977) . Servant Leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York. NY : Paulist Press .

Watson, L.E. ( 1951 ) . Light from Many Lamps . New York: Simon and Schuster.

Survey

October 5, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Do they align with your self-conception or not?

-On the Style Questionnaire , my survey respondents have consistently rated me higher on the relationship behaviors than the task behaviors.  This is in alignment with my self score .

-On the LTQ though, there are some discrepancies between what I think of myself and how others perceive me . I have been rated considerably higher on the the ‘self assured’ and ‘self confident ‘ traits . I scored myself way lower on these 2 traits than the respondents on my survey. I attribute this to my coming across highly on the ‘articulate’ and ‘outgoing’ traits as well .

Did you have any revelations or new information to consider?

One of the respondents to my questionnaire rated me very low on the task oriented behaviors, while at the same time rating me higher on the relationship behaviors . I am quite intrigued by this . I am aware that comparatively I do tend to lean more towards relationship oriented , but I would definitely like to follow up with this co-worker and learn more about their perspective of my deficient tasks orientation .

Did anything challenge you with respect to the results?

I took the skills questionnaire twice on 2 different days . My scores on the technical and conceptual skills were similar on both days , but my score on the human skill was very different on the 2 days ! This was very surprising to me and made me reflect . The one possible explanation I came up with was that it might have something to do with how my interactions with other people during the day had been. This has also made me think that I need to be more aware of my sub conscious feelings or emotions manifesting as my behavior towards others.

Servant Leadership response

October 4, 2017 / / 1 Comment

This is the third of my late responses to Unit 1 activities !

I am responding to nocontest’s question – ” How do you practice increasing your awareness in situations where time is limited, and emotions may be higher than normal? ”

Here is a link to their blog.

I had earlier responded to this on the comments section of their post. I would like to elaborate my thoughts on this .

I agree that self awareness can sometimes take a back seat , especially when we are very invested in an issue. Sometimes our own emotions or past experiences might come in the way of being objective about an issue . I struggle with this too sometimes, though I wouldn’t put this on the top of the qualities that I think are most important to being a good leader. What I have found helpful sometimes is putting my in the other person’s shoes  .  Another strategy that I have found effective is just taking a pause – I call a ‘ time out ‘ and reflect . This helps in avoiding making any impulsive decisions or comments .  I do state here that I do not have any data or literature to support my arguments , these are anecdotal experiences.

Leadership definition

October 4, 2017 / / 0 Comments

I am posting all my responses to Unit 1 activities on the same day, as I just realized that we were supposed to post them in a separate post.

This is my response to mrwilliamsphysed question – ” do you feel Northouse’s ( 2016 ) definition of leadership is different depending on whether you are an assigned or emergent leader ? Here is a link to their blog: https://mrwilliamsphysed.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/ldrs500-2/

I dont think the definition differs for the two kinds of leaders, just the context does . Or more specifically the application does. The assigned leader has the ‘ power ‘ which is bestowed on them because of their designation, and do not necessarily have to work as hard to build a relationship with their followers. An emergent leader has to , as mentioned in the post itself, create a relationship with their peers/ followers . I believe the emergent leader does have to work harder to establish their position within the organization , and create influence .

I also would like to respond to the observation by Kellerman ( 2012 ) , that “Power used to be the domain of leaders, but that is diminishing and shifting to followers ” . I wouldn’t say that power has  shifted from leaders to followers, as much as that the leadership process is now understood to be more of a two way exchange , with increased awareness of each other’s role in the process .

Response Riggisonilap

October 3, 2017 / / 0 Comments

I apologise for not realising that the comments were supposed to be posted in a separate post. I have been responding to my co-students’ post on the comment section in their blogs

This is in response to Riggisonilap’ s question whether the distinction between leader and manager is different ?

Here is the link to their post –

Assigned and Emergent Leaders / Leadership and Management

I think this distinction between a leader and manager is relevant, because even though sometimes their duties might overlap, their overall roles in an organization are different. As you mentioned in your , ‘ people are differently gifted’ ; I would like to add that they are differently trained and might have different perspectives. I see the reason for this distinction at work everyday, where the team leader lays out his vision for the organization, and the manager makes sure the individual roles are carried out ( amongst the myriad other duties both of them perform

Follow The Leader

October 1, 2017 / / 1 Comment

 

I chose to follow Mr Bill Gates. He is the founder or Microsoft and one of the richest men on earth. But he is also the world’s leading philanthropist. I followed him on Facebook and Twitter. I also read Wikipedia to learn more about his early life .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

https://www.facebook.com/BillGates/

 

The one quality  that really impressed me was his encouragement of his successor. When Mr Satya Nadela took over as the CEO of Microsoft in 2014 , Mr Gates reportedly said to him  “ don’t try to be like me “ . Mr Nadela’s interpretation of this was very enlightening ; he took this to mean 2 things- one, was that it was foolish to try and replicate founders; his second inference was that Mr Gates was encouraging him to develop his own style of leadership . Mr Gates also praised  Mr Nadela , at his own expense . He said Mr Nadela was  “naturally great at a skill that took him years to learn- how to deliver feedback with empathy. ” As a de-facto team leader in many clinical situations in my practice , I often rely on other team members for patient education, scheduling etc. I also interact with specialists from other fields in my daily patient care . I appreciate their involvement, and believe in letting each member of the team feel empowered to bring in their unique experiences and perspective to try and provide better care to our patients .

Over the last few years Mr Gates has been dedicating his time and money towards promoting health and literacy in poor communities, mostly in Asia and Africa . Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , he has funded projects to make health care more available and affordable . He has also been promoting vaccination and women’s health, which are issues I feel very strongly about . Being a health care provider myself, I believe we all need to step up our charitable and philanthropic contributions, and be more involved in communities that need help .

Most of the twitter and Facebook feed I was able to gather was from Mr Gates’ followers, with an occasional contribution from Mr Gates himself .   He has 39.2 million followers on Twitter ! My advice to Mr Gates would be to use this platform to reach out to people who  want to be more involved in charity , but don’t know where to start, or how to contribute. He could also enlist more volunteers  to work with him in his projects. The benefits of this are twofold- he gets more manpower, and people from privileged backgrounds get exposure to the lives of the not-so-fortunate. Talk to your followers Mr Gates !

A disturbing ( to me ) piece of information I found about him in Wikipedia was that during his early days at Microsoft, he was known to be verbally combative and berated his managers for perceived holes in their business strategies [1][2] . I wasn’t able to discern whether this is still his leadership style. Doesn’t seem like it is, from what I recently learnt about his comments to the new Microsoft CEO . But I definitely do not agree with this style of leadership, where a leader believes in reprimanding their followers/ employees as a means of getting the best out of them . In my opinion encouragement , kindness and nurturing are more likely to bring about loyalty and efficiency from one’s followers than harsh words. Those in leadership roles should remember, nobody wants too be ‘ mediocre’ or to deliberately do a bad job. Different people just have different capabilities .

On his Facebook page, he lists his personal interests as – Philanthropy, Energy, Education, Health, Global Development . If we were to take these ‘ interests ‘as the principles by which he lives his life, I think they align very closely to my principles. I strongly believe that all of us should look beyond ourselves, seek a charitable cause that we can contribute to . In one of his tweets he said ” disease and poverty are solvable ” . There are a lot of issues the world is dealing with today that are solvable,  so those who are in a position to make a difference need to get involved. In another tweet he was quoted  ” Don’t wallow in failure . Instead learn from it ” . We all have or will have to face failure at some point in our lives. I agree with Mr Gates that dwelling on failure is self-defeating, instead we should use failure as a learning experience and move on .

References

  1. Rensin, David (1994). “The Bill Gates Interview”. Playboy
  2. Ballmer, Steve ( October 9,1997). “Steve Ballmer Speech Transcript- Church Hill Club “. Microsoft. Archived from The Original On April 20, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2008.
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